Search Results
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Is BANT a Sales Process or a Man-Made Disaster?
- January 15, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Last week, I noticed that people are still using this archaic and overly simplistic sales qualifying process, and too many are still writing about the benefits of BANT (Acronym for Budget, Authority, Need, Timing). The first page of a Google search revealed 10 articles were written about BANT in 2024 alone.
How is it that in 2024, people are still hailing BANT as a relevant sales tool?
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Top Five Benefits of Sales Process and Methodology
- January 6, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales Process is a framework for consistent, predictable, repeatable results and the framework is best deployed as a staged, milestone-centric, buyer-focused sequence of events. Listen to this five-second clip from a very popular holiday song to hear the foundation of sales process come to life.
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Homicide Detective Makes Best Case for Sales Process
- March 21, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The author admits that until he conducted his “cold-case investigation” of the New Testament, he was an atheist who always followed the evidence to find the truth. Similarly, a lot of prospects are also non-believers – not necessarily in Jesus – in your product or service. As I read and learned about the author’s methods for uncovering truth, or proof, I felt that salespeople could learn a lot about proof of concept, presenting facts, backing up claims, return on investment, and offering credible testimonials. That’s not nearly the analogy I’m going to make.
Wallace shared a story in the Forward about the time he was shot by a criminal who was on parole, and was not allowed to have a firearm. Up until the moment of the shooting, Wallace believed that a bullet-proof vest would stop a bullet. In the moment of the shooting, he believed in the bullet proof vest. At that moment his belief changed from “belief that” to “belief in.” That was the analogy he wished to apply to the gospels. He wondered if he could find the evidence to replace faith (belief that the miracles occurred) with proof (belief in both Jesus and the miracles).
That also happens to be my analogy from the book. Most salespeople believe that a sales process can help them succeed while the very best salespeople believe in their sales process.
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Sales Process for the Anti-Sales Process Crowd
- January 31, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You can look at sales process any way you want but if what you want are more consistent, predictable results, in a framework that supports sales coaching, then you want a customized, formal, milestone-centric, customer-focused sales process and scorecard!
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Milestones in the Sales Process are Like the Stones in a Wall
- October 5, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
An ideal sales process has 4 stages, each with anywhere from 4 to 10 milestones that must be met in order to move to the next stage.
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How Building a Stone Walkway Makes the Case for Sales Process
- August 16, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We can learn a lot about what happens when you skip steps in a sales process by looking at the work this stone crew is doing.
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My New Perspective on Sales Process and Methodology
- August 8, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We were at the Zoo when we came upon the monkey in the picture. He was holding on to the chainlink fence with both hands and both feet – probably not very unusual for a monkey – but he was sitting on a basketball!
The monkey is following a traditional monkey methodology for hanging on, while being authentic, allowing his silly personality to come through, and getting people who were interacting with him to laugh.
We can even apply that approach to sales process and methodology!
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Sitcoms, Sales Process, Sales Assessments and Sales Competencies
- January 11, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Hubspot, an inbound marketing company published a list of 18 Sales Core Competencies which include non-sales competencies like customer service and data analysis. Job site Indeed published a list of 18 Sales Core Competencies which include non-sales competencies like leadership and change management. I’m not suggesting that these capabilities aren’t important, but in no way, shape or form should they be considered core sales competencies. Why would people turn to any of these lists of opinions when there is a widely accepted, definitive list of 21 Sales Core Competencies backed by science and data on more than 2.3 million salespeople?
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Most Sales Processes, Funnels and Pipelines are How Old?
- September 29, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I was looking for an image of a sales funnel and couldn’t believe what I found! My search results can be found here. Can you believe all of those images of sales funnels? Look them over and see if you can recognize the problem with all of them.
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Is Your Sales Process Backwards, Upside Down or Stupid?
- July 7, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When we look at the sales processes that most companies have in place, there are usually elements of upside down, backwards and stupid.